Finally... the planned virtual party is here. As many of you are aware that I've started inviting Malaysians to partcipate in this even about two weeks back. I'm pretty surprised that I've gotten quite a number of interested parties. Before the invitation I was rather apprehensive cause I was worried that there may be a lack of errr participation or rather food to be served on our Merdeka Open House but boy oh boy, how wrong I was. As usual Malaysians are a sporting lot, no wonder "Malaysia Boleh" is coined.

We are serving the following dishes from all over the world so please help yourself to the spread. To make things easy for myself, I'm placing the order of the dishes according to the submission ie. on a first come first serve basis hahaha, no choice cos I'm pretty busy after a week's off and my home PC decided to take a strike!

First one up was msaufong of My Home Recipe. She's a mummy of two cutie pies and had cooked up one of my fave dish - Stir-fry Spicy Prawn. I loved the amount of chopped garlic and chillies used. I can smell the aroma as I'm typing this.

teckiee from Petaling Jaya of Eat First Think Later is serving a Lai Wok Pan. Now this is really a long forgotten recipe since I've never heard of my Hakka mom mentioned about this. But then again... the Hakka have many clans so this dish may not from her clan heh. teckiee even has a video on how to perform the difficult part of the recipe.

Eddie of Cooking Engineer fame apologised for not able to cook up something authentic Malaysian. Gotta excuse him since he has since became a citizen of the US recently but nevermind lah he would still be a Malaysian at heart. Our Tukang Masak Jurutera came out with an humourous post of albeit he cooked up errr buffalo stew. So Malaysians, we excused him, can or not huh? Well at least he posted in BM but pasar style kakaka... I am still ROTFL ok over his post.

From the The Journal of a Girl who Loves To Cook, Su Yin who is currently in Sydney, Australia, made up a batch of Kampar Chicken Biscuits, more popularily known as Kai Chai Peang. This gutsy girl braved herself thru a smelly bottle of nam yue (red fermented beancurd) to come out with this all time favourite Chinese snack. Tourists especially locals who passes by Bidor, Kampar and Ipoh will never leave these towns without a few packets of these delicious biscuits. At least now with the recipe, I don't need to travel so far for my fix.

Tham Jiak's Rachel from Kuala Lumpur is serving us slices of light and fluffly Green Tea Chiffon Cake. Apparently her Ah Ma used to bake mean chiffon cakes which Rachel devoured during her childhood. So much so that Rachel had inherited the chiffon cake mold from Ah Ma but sad that she can't use it at the moment as the mold is too huge for her oven. Nevermind girl, next time get a bigger oven when you have the opportunity.

Students Pei Mun, Min Yin and Audrey in Melbourne, Australia, teamed up to make a long forgotten cake made of Milo, condensed milk and marie biscuits! The cake is named Kek Batik Ayu... excellent dessert for our Open House. We, Malaysians, certainly can relate to the the 3 main ingredients of this cake with Milo being our favourite chocolate drink, condensed milk in our beverages especially the institutional teh tarik and childhood fave round shaped biscuit called Marie biscuit.

We have a fiery red Kerabu Bee Hoon whipped up by Bee Yinn in US. The bee hoon looked so spicy and it is sinfully topped with delicious and huge prawns. Save some prawns for me Bee Yinn!!! Bee Yinn had started a new food blog, Rasa Malaysia. Do drop by for a visit.

Audrey Cooks came out with a curry that had a lot of ingredients married together. She had aptly named it Dry Muhibbah Curry. Muhibbah since prawns, aubergines, lady fingers, tomatoes, salted fish head and dried cuttlefish made up this dish! Must be great with loads of steamed white rice!

Hijackqueen of Kuala Lumpur submitted a very pretty dessert of Cendol Jelly. It has layers of coconut milk, cendol and gula melaka. Imagine a cool cool piece of jelly slittering down your throat... ahhhh a bliss in our hot weather.

Our famous 5xmom from Penang, Lilian, cooked up a storm in her kitchen until lesung batu also came out but for photography purposes only wor. She had made a Kari Ayam Kapitan which is also best served with steamed white rice. I can just eat the kuah with rice!

As for myself, I've made up a snack name Ipoh Ipoh. It's a curry puff but with a non-spicy fillings of yambeans (sengkuang) and bamboo shoots cooked in tau cho sauce. Served with a delicious vinegared chilly sauce. For the mains, I'm serving Chicken with 8 Treasures Rice. Seems right for the Merdeka Open House with the hope that our country will reap in some treasures in the years to come. With the treasures in hand, hopefully there won't be more hikes on fuel, toll, food etc...

To end the Open House with a sweet note, we have a popular Chinese dessert - Cream of Red Bean (hoong dau sar in Cantonese) which is slightly different from the usual Sweet Red Bean Soup. This is to wish Malaysia, hoong wan thong thau which is roughly translated as blessed with good luck!

14 items for the virtual open house, not too bad for the first time. If I have left out anyone, kindly drop me a mail. I will try to make it up later. I'm so sorry for posting this at such unearthly hour for an open house as I don't have a choice. I won't have any PC to do this tomorrow since hubby need his notebook for discussion. Will try to reply the comments as soon as I can lay my hands on the notebook when he comes back.

Well, I'm rather glad with the amount of participation in our inaugural Merdeka Open House. Even though not many of us managed to stick to the main theme but tak pe lah... as long as it has certain elements of a Malaysian dish, also jadi. By the way, I've hijacked your photos without permission to be posted here to make the post more colourful. Hope you guys don't mind. Sorry. Thank you all so much for putting up a great show. As for the rest of the Malaysians who can't made it this time round... sila menjamu selera!

Selamat Menyambut Hari Merdeka Ke-49!!!

I'm proud to be a Malaysian.

UPDATED 11 September 2006

Passionfordecor did not managed to email me on time for her submission. However she did post up her post for this... Check out her Urap, a side dish of very simple grated coconut fried with shallots, dried prawns and chillies, to be served with nasi impit and sambal tumis udang dish. Thanks for the entry.

23 comments:

Wuah...I am soooo hungry and wish this is real. I want to devour everything, including my kari kapitan. Happy Merdeka to all and especially to you Babe! Thanks for the hosting. This is fun, let's do this again.

well hijackqueen, you could lick the bigger picture when you click on their individual link :p hehehe ehh... everyone brought their own utensils mah so they wash the dishes themselves kkakaka i just provide water & dishwashing liquid :D

thanks lanatir, next time make you participate lerrr. submit something authentic Malaccan

audrey, if its for real i think that will be the remedy for your growling stomach :p

Aiyo! I forgot to e-mail you my dish, hehe. But never mind, it was fun doing it and this has certainly been a new experience for me! All the dishes look delicious, btw and thanks babe_kl for hosting such an event! Hope there'll be another one next year.

passionfordecor, awww man it really too bad you had forgotten to mail me your submission. urap is so apt for this theme, so long forgotten. i'll see if i can make it up later. btw where have you been all these while?? your food blog is so lovely and the photos are really kick ass!

I've been following your blog for quite a while and enjoying your wealth of good recipes. When Foodista announced that they are going to publish the best food blogs in a full color book that will be published by Andrews McMeel Publishing Fall 2010, I naturally thought of you. This recipe would be a good submission! You can enter here: http://www.foodista.com/blogbook/submit

Cheers, Melissa

melissa@foodista.comEditor and Community DeveloperFoodista.com -- The Cooking Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit